If I Die Young
by CityGirl13
Summary: She knows what he needs, more than he does. Words? No. Violence? No. He doesn't even know, not until it's close to too late. He doesn't know that he needs her.


"_If I die young, bury me in satin  
Lay me down on a, bed of roses  
Sink me in the river, at dawn  
Send me away with the words of a love song."_

**Insandeandluvingit, this is your payback. I hope you like it.**

If I Die Young

She knew me better than anyone.

My father saw me as a miniature of himself when he was younger, when he was still a strong Career fresh before his Games. To him, I'm nothing but an echo of his own former glory. That's what I've been raised to be. A Career, that's my life and destiny. Train, fight, kill, win. Four words that have been my personal mantra since the age of 6, and remain words I whisper to myself.

To my mother, I was a son she had birthed, but not a boy she had raised. I didn't think that she even knew me, really. But what was there to know? I was a Career, what else? Was there even anything? Sometimes, when I sat alone, I wondered. What would I be like if my father was no Victor? If I hadn't been raised the way I had, who would I have been? I asked him once, and received a hard clout across the ear, and had my training regime doubled for a week. I never asked again.

My friends? I had few of them, I didn't have the time. School, what little of it there was, and training was all that my life consisted of. Even the people I trained with didn't know me, save one, _she _knew me all too well.

She knew how I thought, how I moved, she picked the path I would take before I took it. And she knew _me_, she knew just how to get to me when no one else could.

I hated her for it, but I also loved her.

The Capitol, they all thought that they knew me. They thought that they knew all the Tributes, as if they could ever know even a little of what was really in our hearts. But we had our roles to fill, to make them feel good about themselves, and I played my part like a born actor. I was a second skin, one almost more comfortable to me than my true self. A self that was harder to find year by year, and the want to find it lessened too with time.

_11_, how had a scrawny thing from 12 gotten a score higher than me! It didn't add up, what was she hiding?

"Calm down," Enobaria drawled; as I knocked over a tall Capitol vase, "It's not the end of the world."

"No, but it could damn well be the end of my Games!" I retorted.

An Avox appeared and began clearing the wreckage, one put a gentle hand on my shoulder to pull me out of the way. I whirled and stepped back as if burned, glaring with fury at the mute, who cowered in fear. Within a few quick, angry, strides, I was gone from the room. Pacing furiously in my own, a habit ever since we had arrived, I heard the door swish open.

"Cato?"

_Her_ voice. I spun to face her, she was so slight, it felt like I could pick her up in one hand and crush her. Yet, with the other I could hold her close. Her grey eyes watched me critically as she stepped closer, black ponytail swinging with her movements.

"Clove," I ground out, "What are you doing here."

But she knew me, she knew I didn't need words. And without giving any of them, she threw a vicious right hook at my face. I caught her small fist in my much larger hand, twisting her arm behind her back, making her arch away from the pain. But she was fast, her other hand jerked back and hit me in the balls. Now that was low, but it got her out of my grip, and within half a second she had danced her way to the other side of the room.

I followed at a charge, but she sidestepped out of my way, her high laugh slicing through the anger in my head, cutting to my heart.

This continued for some time, until finally I surged forwards, and she didn't step out of the way. My momentum carried the both of us backwards, and we fell onto my bed. My hands landed on either side of her face, and her tiny palms spread out over my chest. Laughter filled her eyes, laughter and steel.

Again, I didn't need words, but she knew what I did need.

Her hands slid up my chest, arms wrapping around my neck to draw me down, and then our lips met. It wasn't gentle, for we were not gentle souls. It was hot and hard, and I probably bruised her lips, but she nipped my tongue. It was a rush, a bigger one than fighting, and I wanted more. I would always want more, there could never be enough.

_Hungry_, that was the word to fit the emotions surging between us at this moment. I wasn't sure how long we tried to satiate that need for, but unfortunately oxygen was still needed. When we pulled apart to breath, she grinned, her lips slightly swollen from kissing, and slipped out from beneath me.

The loss was like a gasping breath, and she was too far away all too soon. Sending a final look back at me, before slipping out the door silently.

**/*0*/**

"Clove, pretty thing like you, who's the lucky man back home?" Caesar inquired; leaning forwards with a grin.

I ground my teeth, _she's not yours to compliment._

"Oh no," she replied with a laugh, "There's no one back home."

"No? I don't believe you," he said.

A careless shrug of her slim shoulders almost made me want to march back on stage and take her in my arms again, "Well Caesar, I'm just not that kind of girl."

Later that night, I was already in her room when she came in. She didn't seem surprised to see me, I should have expected that.

"So, what kind of girl are you?" I asked.

"Why do you want to know?" she shot back; pulling a multitude of pins out of her hair.

"I'm curious."

"No you're not, you're not a curious person."

"How do you know that?" perhaps I'd have an answer to appease my mind.

"I just do."

Another shrug, and this time there was nothing to stop me, I strode forward and took her. She turned to me, a slight smile playing with her lips.

"Can I help you?"

"You'd know if you could," I replied.

"I suppose I would, and do."

Another kiss, and this time there was no running away when I pulled back, only her smile.

"It doesn't always have to be violent," she said.

"I am violet," was all the answer I had for her; that was me, in a word.

"No," she shook her head; loose black hair tumbling around her shoulders at this final jog, "No you're not."

"How would you know?" I demanded; stepping back from her, "How is it that you think you know me so well?"

"Are you trying to tell me that I don't?" she inquired; delicately aching one eyebrow.

I had no answer for her with words, so again, I didn't use them. She ducked the punch, and sent her own that connected with my gut, and even in her interview dress she managed to get a kick in too. But when I swept her legs out from under her, things all spiralled out of our control from there. The moment she was on the floor, I was toppled and fell forwards too, having to roll so as not to crush her. She jumped on top of me, pinning my arms under her knees and straddling my chest, holding a hairpin to my throat as if it was one of her knives.

"Didn't think so," was her only comment.

But that night I didn't need to fight, for once in my life, not even I knew what I wanted. But as always, _she_ did. I stayed the night, and we didn't even use the bed. She relaxed, and let herself stretch down so she was simply lying on top of me, and all I could think of was that I'd never had a better blanket. I remembered thinking I could crush her with a single hand, but now I held her with both, and that was how we spent the night.

**/*0*/**

"Not that it matters now," I said; throat sticking with the words, and the blood.

Nothing mattered now, why should it? I'd been too late. Too late to save her, and therefore too late to save myself. I didn't think I even wanted to know, I wasn't sure of anything anymore. And I didn't' have her to tell me the truth. Now, at a time when I didn't even know one shred of myself, I had no one to ask.

Her scream echoed in my head, replaying over and over again in a hideous cycle that never ended. Not even in the sleep I never had.

"_CATO!"_

Her last words, my name. And as I held her, so small, I cradled her head in my hands and knew she was gone. I could feel it, the dent where her skull had been caved in, and it was nothing to the tearing rent left in my heart. My rage after the food had been blown up was nothing to how I felt now. Rage didn't even begin to describe this. No language knew such words, and I certain didn't. Words weren't needed again, but now I had nothing to take their place.

_Pain_, there was a sharp stab of it in my hand. I jerked my arm away from 12's throat, an arrow protruding from the back of my hand. But before I could process further, there was an elbow in my chest, and I was falling.

I had fallen a few times in my life, but this fall was second in length to only one. Falling for her. That fall had taken years, and felt like centuries. Other falls, happened in a moment. This one, was somewhere in between. It was as if time slowed, and saw my arms flailing before me. It looked ridiculous with the arrow in my hand. And I remembered all my falls. I remembered the most important one. And I remembered her face.

That was the last image in my mind as I plunged into a sea of mutts, her face, and her lips moving.

"Cato, you idiot, fight."

Those were the words her lips formed, and so I obeyed. Pulling my sward out from its sheath at my hip, I laid about me and sliced at the mutts closing in. I didn't' even see as I made my way back to the tail of the Cornucopia, they were all one and the same. Until I saw one. Until I saw _her._

The eyes, they stared at me, they knew me. The anger in them was something I hadn't seen, but those eyes were eyes I would never forget. Grey, grey like the storm clouds, and just as volatile. One couldn't fight a storm, and I didn't even try.

My sword hand went limp, the blade slipping through my fingers, and they were on me. She was on my chest, just as she had been the night before we left for the Arena. Only now instead of soft hands stroking me, I had claws shredding my armour and lacerating my skin.

Oh well, it was her. She knew me, she knew how to cause me pain, and she did. Not with her claws, but with her eyes. So much anger, and I knew why. I'd been too late.

"Please."

The word left my lips in a croak, and I couldn't get the other words out, _please forgive me_. They refused to move from my head to my mouth, and I supposed now was another time where they weren't needed.

I saw it coming, through a gap in the mutts, an arrow arcing down to me. Her last words had been my name, it was fair I did the same.

"Clove."

It took all my effort to get that whisper out, and for the briefest moment, a flicker in the stormy eyes.

But then, nothing.


End file.
